As you may know, the global economic depression has hit the media hard, due in large part to the fact that ad rates are in the toilet. OSNews is in the same boat. Despite the fact that we still have good advertisers, our income from advertising this year will only be a fraction of what it was last year. We probably won't make enough to cover our costs. Other news sites, as they've seen revenue decrease, have responded with more, and more intrusive, advertising. We don' t want to do that. We feel we have a covenant with our readers. If you'll be respectful of our need to run ads, we'll be respectful of your need to read the site without having ads shoved down your throat. Please read on, for more discussion of our ad "covenant," and a plea for help, including a plea to all Adblock users to please unblock OSNews.

I don't know if my example is a common one, but here is how I choose if I block ads or not on a website:

-I hate when ads are animated. It just catches your attention and distract you from reading the content. I prefer to look at the ads when I want, I don't need them to be screaming "heyyyy LOOOK AT MEEEEE". So no gif, no flash

-I want to save my laptop battery life. Flash ads are a pain in the where you know, it just uses tons of CPU for nothing (see previous point).

-I hate ads appearing in a layer above the content. As I said before, I can look at ads by myself when I want, no need to throw them in my face all the time.

So far OSNews is doing good when it comes to ads. However, would you change any of the previous "rules", i will be tempted to change my Adblock settings for sure. That's how I decide.